Category Archives: Energy

SIMON Hartley is one of many forward-thinking residents of our region doing some impressive sustainable living experiments in their homes and yards.

Mr Hartley will open up his home to the public this month as part of Sustainable House Day, actually run over three days this year in a joint project between Lismore and Byron Shire Councils.

At the main event in Bangalow, a suburb of “tiny houses” will pop up for the Sustainable House Day Expo, held on Saturday September 13.

These three homes are open this Sunday:
• 9am-noon. Richard Swinton and Cindy Thummell at 24 Ryces Dr, Clunes have retrofitted a 1980s project home.
• 10am-4pm. The Robinsons at 182 Bentley Rd, Tullera have built a new, low-cost sustainable home.
• 10am-4pm. Elaine Wood at 51 Cedar Dr, Dunoon has a solar passive steel-frame design.

These two homes are open next Sunday, September 14:
• 10am-4pm. Vanessa Tallon at 9 Keith St, Girards Hill has retrofitted a 1940s weatherboard cottage.
• 10am-4pm. Simon Hartley at 2/89 Figtree Dr, Goonellabah has a retrofitted brick duplex with intensive food production.

The popular tiny house movement is built on saving time, money, and the environment by dramatically reducing the size of our living spaces.

The event will include speakers on tiny houses, straw-bale building and a carbon neutral eco-village and information on repurposed shipping container housing, solar passive designs, aquaponics and retrofitting homes for energy efficiency.

Examples of “green” granny flat designs will also go on show, with the winner of Sustainable Small House Design Competition to be announced on the day.

There were 50 entries to the competition that gave designers a blank slate to create the best possible sustainable design.

“The competition was open to professional architects and designers, the community and young people,” Lismore City Council environment strategies officer Vanessa Tallon said.

“Some of the entries are unique and provide clever insight into how to build small and sustainable.”

Five locals are opening their homes for inspection on the Sunday before and the day after the expo.

One critical indicator of environmental impact is to measure our energy consumption.

When you click on one of the countries in the graph below, you’ll see how that country compares to the United States in the size of its population, the amount of energy it consumes as a country, and the amount of energy consumed per person.

Why single out the U.S.A.?

Why are we focusing on the United States? BecauseAmericans make up only 5% of the world’s population and yet consume 20% of its energy! That’s really extravagant! Imagine if you consumed four times more gasoline as your neighbors… or four times more food… or produced four times more garbage. Your neighbors wouldn’t be very happy! Yet, that’s what we’re doing.

In fact, on average, every time an American spends a dollar, the energy equivalent of a cup of oil is used to produce what that dollar buys! That’s why we’ve singled out the United States for comparison here … its energy consumption is truly extraordinary!

Population data source: Population Reference Bureau; 2007 World Population Data Sheet.

Energy data source: U.S. Energy Information Administration 2007.

What’s the Point?

The purpose of this exercise isn’t to blame people in rich countries for wasting energy, because for the most part they don’t know they’re doing it. It’s not to say each person in a poor country is as poor as every other person in that country, because there are rich and poor people in every country. And it’s not to imply that all we need to do is consume less energy and everything will be OK. The point is that the population problem isn’t just something “over there” in “those poor countries,” where they may be having more children.From a consumption perspective, the developed countries have a bigger population growth problem than the developing countries!

Next time you hear about a woman in India who has 7 children, remember that she’d have to have more than 10 children to match the impact of an American woman with just one child!